Laura Galán in Piggy (Jorge Fuembuena/Magnet Releasing)

Piggy is not for the faint of heart. The gore is surprisingly minimal for this grindhouse-inspired horror, but the circumstances and the humiliation and trials the title character endures is difficult to watch, to say the least. Piggy is the nickname given to Sara (Laura Galán) by a trio of lithe townie mean girls.

Sara is the overweight teenage daughter of butchers, and she works in the family shop in a small southwestern Spanish town. She swims in the town pool when no one else is around, where, one day, the above-mentioned teenagers taunt her. Sara dives deep into the pool, not noticing that there’s a dead body weighted down, and as she surfaces, the girls use a skimmer to net Sara’s head to force her underwater, nearly killing her. Then they steal her bag with her clothes in it, forcing Sara to walk home wet in her bikini as she’s taunted by three teenage boys. So, when something Very Bad happens to the girls and Sara has information on what has happened, she is somewhat hesitant to divulge that information.

What follows is just as much a character study and social drama as it is a horror film as we watch the town wrenched apart. This is all seen through Sara’s point of view, and we get a deep dive into her psyche. Her loving father is somewhat clueless what to do with her, besides take her hunting, while her mother (an excellent Carmen Machi) is a piece of work. She runs the family, and particularly Sara, with a slew of understated but cutting insults. Sara is essentially either ignored or made fun of, save for one young man who rises to the level of pitying her.

When a man does enter her life, someone who does not judge her but treats her tenderly, he is most definitely the wrong kind of man. To say more would spoil the film, except to mention that this creates a complex, psychological relationship between two social outcasts and Sara is given a very specific choice of how to respond to her victimization.

Galán, a 33-year-old effortlessly believable as a teenager, is a marvel as Sara. She inhabits her character like an old coat. Unfortunately, that coat is also a hair shirt as Sara is ashamed of her body and has trouble making eye contact with people. What Galán brings to Sara is forward momentum. There’s a propulsion to the narrative that is energized by how Galán plays Sara. Sara’s fear not to be found out, either as a witness or just her need to disappear, brings the movie to the next plot point. Galán drives home Sara’s uncomfortableness with herself and tracks the adolescent’s burgeoning sexuality in an honest and compelling way.

Ultimately, Piggy is about bullying and the effects it has on the victim, but it is also about empathy in the most unusual places and circumstances, social stigma, and the stifling smallness of small towns, no matter the country. It is also very creepy and unsettling, reminiscent, as I said above, of grindhouse films of the 1970s, particularly during the last half hour when we discover the fate of the missing girls.

If you are a fan of psychological horror films, this is a must-see. But be warned, what will keep you up at night is not what you would expect: It will be the effect of how we treat people who are different.